Expats in demand as core sector project heads

Expatriate Indians are now in demand in the manufacturing and infrastructure sectors to head specific project-based assignments, with salary levels much above their domestic counterparts.

"The US is a favourite hunting ground in this regard," says K Sudarshan, managing partner, EMA International Partners, an executive placement agency.

A recent instance is the GMR group - a leading private infrastructure conglomerate - which has hired an Indian expatriate to head its airport projects in India.

Last year the group had bid for restructuring and modernisation of the Delhi and Mumbai airports, while it is also involved in upgrading the Hyderabad airport.

The candidate had exposures in similar projects in Singapore (Changi Airport) and Malaysia. Another instance is the Birla group, hiring a US-based Indian expatriate to oversee the entire group's technology functions.

An industry source said, "Corporates are looking for somebody who has an experience in the diverse areas where they have a presence." This is not just technology as in information technology but would also cover sectors like automotive design.

There are a whole lot of infrastructure projects such as express highways coming in up in south India, most of which are looking at Indian expatriates to head them.

S Krishna Prakash, managing partner, EMA said, "Such skill sets are not available in India, due to the simple reason that so long such projects were not there."

In the pharmaceutical sector there is little core research being done in India so people with expertise in this segment is hard to find.

Indian expatriates are also keen to return to their home country with so much happening in the manufacturing and infrastructure sector while they are preferred because of their ability to adapt since they are already familiar to some extent with the Indian milieu.

"They bring in their own ways of functioning and expertise to the project, which inculcates discipline in the rest of the team," said Prakash.

While expatriates are recruited for specific projects which have a defined time limit, they then stay on in India "because the scope for that kind of work is expanding".

Their pay-scales are also linked to global benchmarks.

Incidentally, the return of India expatriates to their country of origin initially started off with the technology sector.

The boom in software in India, which coincided with a global tech slowdown, especially in the west, led to techies returning to pursue carriers in India.